


And the Secrets that She Keeps

by maideniron



Category: Cracks (2009), Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 11:15:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16764058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maideniron/pseuds/maideniron
Summary: Living in a conservative orphanage, Nellie hates her life. Though, there's one thing she hates more than that: spoiled, entitled rich snobs who look as pretty as Isadora looks.





	1. Chapter 1

i.

A quiet roommate was a roommate full of mystery, and Nellie’s roommate was just that. She thought she was a pretty little thing, with her neatly combed hair and her tightly secured bobby pins and buttons, but no. She was not, a feat that the new arrival would learn the hard way.  
Her firm statue stood like a flag pole within the dimly lit corridor of rowed beds. Ten to a room, and yet it still felt like they were the only two that inhabited that said space. “Pretty things don’t last here,” Nellie said with a slithering grin, “the sooner you wipe that crud off your face, the better.”  
“Does it bother you?” The arrival asked, her nose a perfect and elegant slant.  
Nellie hated it.  
“Why would it bother me?” Her arms snaked across her chest, thin and bird like. Her mother always compared her to a sickly sparrow , another thing she hated: her mother. Within the gesture was a defense mechanism, defeat. Something that Nellie did not like to experience. Why on earth would she care whether or not the new girl wore makeup? “It bothers our attendees. Some,” she waved to the lot behind her. All shriveled in their beds, gossiping and pulling at each other’s hair. Nellie was smart enough to never let them have a go at her hair, they’d rip it out. In inexperience or envy, “don’t have the luxury of rich parents.”  
The girl scoffed and leaned down to open her suitcase, “I never said my parents were rich.”  
“An assumption. No one has this much clothes-”  
“Who said they were full of clothes?”  
Nellie hummed, a mischievous ribbon fluttered in her tone as she forwardly took a fall onto the girl’s mattress. It creaked and squacked at the weight, “what are they full of, then? Gifts? For us?”  
“Do share.” Mirella peered from behind the dusty corridor. Her tone was far from innocent, “we love presents from rich girls. Whether they give them to us, or not.”


	2. destroy

ii.

“I hate her.” Nellie expressed, tearing a weed from it’s body.  
Mirella giggled, collecting her fair share of the same weeds and making a peasant bouquet. The other girls from the room, Molly, Abigail and Harriet flocked around them. They muttered things to themselves, all while entwining the said weeds into each other’s hair. “You don’t hate her,” Molly added, “no one hates her. She’s new meat, we’ll hate her after she’s been here for six months.” She paused, and then blew a wishing well in her face, “like you.”  
“Cunt.” Nellie spat, furrowing her brows. “I mean it. She’s...so perfect, I mean. She comes across so perfect, so prim and proper.” Her voice raised, only to lean back on her hands. Calloused and course, into the moist dirt and sproutlings. Her fingernails dug, leaving residue from the grounds within the underneath. “I want to unravel her.”  
“Destroy her, you mean.” Mirella said, eyeing her bouquet of weeds. “Tear her apart. Pull her hair out, scratch her eyes.”  
Nellie wasn’t sure if that’s exactly what she meant, but it seemed like a good option. “I want her to come down from that almighty dick she rides with.” The girls erupted with laughter, “what? She acts like she has one. She just, walks around like she’s a man. Like she’s in charge of all of us. Don’t you hate it?”  
“I doubt Isadora has a dick.” Abigail raised her brows, “if she did, I probably would have been riding it already.”  
“Abigail!” Molly shouted, appalled. “Did you forget why your mother sent you here? Why your father…”  
“That man is not my father.” Molly quickly defended. “No father looks at his daughter the way he looked at me. Sick pig,” she waved. “Besides, with no boys around here it’s hard. Not literally, unfortunately, but… Nellie acts like she wants her. In fact,” The blonde leaned over and tickled Nellie’s leg, “she’s got a raging hard on for her. Why else would she act so appalled by her presence?”  
“Nympho.” Nellie cursed, kicking her away.   
“It’s love!” Molly swooned.  
“It’s not love,” Mirella exhaled, collecting Molly back between her legs. She began to finish up her wrap for her flowers. “If it were love, Nellie wouldn’t look at her like she wants to claw her face off. Isn’t that right, Nellie?”  
“Right.” Nellie said, red-faced.


	3. snazzle's serenade

iii.

“So,” Mrs. Snazzle said, perfecting her perfectly shuffled papers. “You don’t know who you are.”  
Nellie scoffed. “I never said that.”  
“You implied it, it’s enough for me to assume that…”  
“Assume what?”  
“That you don’t know who you are.”  
The statement was triggering to Nellie, mostly because it was true. Partly because it didn’t make sense, how couldn’t she know who she was? Nellie was Nellie, an orphan girl with a particular intolerance for ignorance. A particular intolerance for stuck up, long nosed girls who have perfect ink hair and eyelashes that slant…  
“Nellie?”  
“This is stupid.” She confessed, crossing her arms against her aged cardigan. “Really stupid, Snazz.”  
“Mrs. Snazzle.”  
Spontaneously, she stood. Her scuffed shoes creaked the floorboard beneath, an unhappy rhythm as she physically evaded the assumption. A window was before her before she knew it. “So, Snazz. What are you assuming?”  
Mrs. Snazzle looked long and hard at the girl, only to direct her gaze back down at her book and mark a little mark. What did that mark say? And, what did it say about her?   
Nellie shifted uncomfortably.  
“I’m assuming you’re hiding from yourself. I’m assuming that your history of outbursts, both physical and emotional, are a result of…”  
“Abandonment,” Nellie and Mrs. Snazzle said in union, “neglect and a Borderline Personality Disorder.”  
Mrs. Snazzle raised her brows.  
“I was diagnosed before I got here. This isn’t my first shrink rodeo.”  
The elder woman exhaled for the hundredth time this session, “what haven’t you experienced?”  
“Excuse me?”  
“What,” Mrs. Snazzle began, “haven’t you experienced? Emotionally, physically…”  
“Gah,” Nellie gagged, making her way across the room and to the door “no. Not happening, Snazz.”


	4. sin

iv.

It was sickening the way Isadora looked. How tall, how lanky. She looked like the perfect picture of the commercial crone that’d plague the forests. Her nails looked like she’d dug in the earth at night, and her hair looked akin to an overgrown mop. Or a horse mane. Her nose was a perfect obtuse slant, and the bow of her lips looked...  
“Have you ever noticed how cut Albert Mott’s jawline is?” Molly asked, head cocked on her hand. Her lips toyed with the eraser of a very burnt, very used pencil.  
Nellie was disgusted, in more ways than one. “Is that a good thing?”  
Molly seemed alarmed at the question, only to swat at Nellie’s thigh in retaliation. “Yes, it’s a good thing. Nellie, god.” She leaned back, “I’d commit a thousand sins to get in his pants.”  
“She’d commit a thousand sins if she got in his pants.” Abigail murmured, snickering.  
“It’s too bad he only has eyes for Nellie, who won’t give him the time of day.” Molly sighed. “I swear, are you sure you’re not a lesbian? He’s grade A meat, why wouldn’t you want that?”  
Nellie snapped, “don’t use that word, I don’t like it.”  
“What, meat? It’s true.” Abigail defended, “he’s all muscle, no brain.”  
“The other word.” Nellie tried, an attempt to beat around the bush of the actual word.  
“Lesbian?” Isadora asked, looming over their collection of desks. Nellie didn’t notice, but by falsely ogling at Albert Motts, Isadora had gathered the handheld books and was passing them out.  
What a do-gooder.   
“Excuse me?” Nellie stood in her seat, immediately catching Isadora’s tall stare.  
“The book.” The crone girl dropped the book on Nellie’s desk, only to draw a long finger and rap on it. “It’s full of dykes.”  
“Excuse me?” Nellie’s fists began to curl. “What did you say?”  
“Hey,” Molly said, “Nellie, easy.”  
“Dykes.” Isadora passed the rest of the books out and tossed her hair, if Nellie hadn’t been so enraged - she would have sewn it to the memory of an ink spill across tan parchment, “you said you didn’t like the word.”  
“I don’t like that word either.”  
“Good.” Isadora began with a smirk, “me neither.”


End file.
